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• I need to make a multithreading program (python)

  - by Andreawu98

  import multiprocessing import time from itertools import product out_file = open("test.txt", 'w') P = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p','q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z',] N = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] M = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'] c = int(input("Insert the number of digits you want: ")) n = int(input("If you need number press 1: ")) m = int(input("If you need upper letters press 1: ")) i = [] if n == 1: P = P + N if m == 1: P = P + M then = time.time() def worker(): for i in product(P, repeat=c): #check every possibilities k = '' for z in range(0, c): # k = k + str(i[z]) # print each possibility in a txt without parentesis or comma out_file.write( k + '\n') # out_file.close() now = time.time() diff = str(now - then) # To see how long does it take print(diff) worker() time.sleep(10) # just to check console The code check every single possibility and print it out in a test.txt file. It works but I really can't understand how can I speed it up. I saw it use 1 core out of my quad core CPU so I thought Multi-threading might work even though I don't know how. Please help me. Sorry for my English, I am from Italy.

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• A basic load test question

  - by user236131

  I have a very basic load test question. I am running a load test using VSTS 2008 and I have test rig with controller + 10 agents. This load test is against a SharePoint farm I have. My goal of the load test is to find out the resource utilization on web+app+db tiers of my farm for any given load scenario. An example of a load scenario is Usage profile: Average collaboration (as defined by SCCP) User Load: 500 (using step load pattern=a step of 50 every 2 mins and a warm up time of 2mins for every step) Think time: 0 Load duration: 8hrs Now, the question is: Is it fair to expect that metrics like Requests/sec, %processor time on web front end / App / DB, Test/sec, and etc become flat or enter a steady state at one point in time during the load test. Like I said, the goal is not to create a bottleneck but to only measure the utilization of resources by the above load profile. I am asking this question because I see something different. At one point in the load test, requests/sec becomes more or less flat. But processor utilization on the web/DB servers keeps increasing. After digging through the data a bit, I see that "tests running" counter also steadily increased over time. So, if I run the load test for more than 8hrs, %processor may go up further. This way, I don't know what to consider as the load excreted by the load profile. What does this "tests running" counter really signify? How is this different from tests/sec? Another question is: how can I find out why "tests running" counter shows an increase overtime? Thanks for your time

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• Python : How do you find the CPU consumption for a piece of code?

  - by Yugal Jindle

  Background: I have a django application, it works and responds pretty well on low load, but on high load like 100 users/sec, it consumes 100% CPU and then due to lack of CPU slows down. Problem : Profiling the application gives me time taken by functions. This time increases on high load. Time consumed may be due to complex calculation or for waiting for CPU. so, how to find the CPU cycles consumed by a piece of code ? Since, reducing the CPU consumption will increase the response time. I might have written extremely efficient code and need to add more CPU power OR I might have some stupid code taking the CPU and causing the slow down ? Any help is appreciated ! Update: I am using Jmeter to profile my webapp, it gives me a throughput of 2 requests/sec. [ 100 users] I get a average time of 36 seconds on 100 request vs 1.25 sec time on 1 request. More Info Configuration Nginx + Uwsgi with 4 workers No database used, using a responses from a REST API On 1st hit the response of REST API gets cached, therefore doesn't makes a difference. Using ujson for json parsing. Curious to Know: Python-Django is used by so many orgs for so many big sites, then there must be some high end Debug / Memory-CPU analysis tools. All those I found were casual snippets of code that perform profiling.

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• In sync query calls, one query causing other query to run slower. Why?

  - by Irchi

  Sorry for the long question, but I think this is an interesting situation and I couldn't find any explanations for it: I was involved in optimization of an application that performed a large number of sequential SELECT and INSERT statements on a single dedicated SQL Server database. The process needs to INSERT a large number of records into a table, but for each of them there should be some value mappings, which performed using SELECT statements on another table in the same database. For a specific execution, it took 90 minutes to run. I used a profiler (JProfiler - the application is Java-based) to determine how much time does each part of the application take. It yields that 60% of the time was spent on INSERT method calls, and almost 20% on SELECT calls (the rest distributed in other parts). After some trials, I came to this situation: I commented out the INSERT query that took 60% of the time. I was expecting for the total run time to be around 35 minutes, as I have removed 60% of the 90 minutes. But the whole process took the same 90 minutes (doing only SELECTs and nothing else), but each SELECT took longer this time! Everything was running sync, there were no async calls. And there was only one single thread of execution. SELECT and INSERT queries are very simple, and don't have anything special, and they are on different tables, but on the same DB. I tested with both the DB on the application machine, and on a remote network machine. I can't think of any explanation for this, as the Profiler (Application profiler, not SQL Profiler) reported the changes in the method call times, and by removing INSERT statements SELECT statements took longer to run. Can anyone give me some kind of explanation of what could have happened? (there can't be cache / query optimization stuff, because the queries were run in sync, and in a single thread, and it was far from affecting the cache this much) I should note that the bottleneck of the speed was in SQL server, using most of the CPU time.

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• Stop SQL returning the same result twice in a JOIN

  - by nbs189

  I have joined together several tables to get data i want but since I am new to SQL i can't figure out how to stop data being returned more than once. her's the SQL statement; SELECT T.url, T.ID, S.status, S.ID, E.action, E.ID, E.timestamp FROM tracks T, status S, events E WHERE S.ID AND T.ID = E.ID ORDER BY E.timestamp DESC The data that is returned is something like this; +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | URL | ID | Status | ID | action | ID | timestamp | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | T.1 | 4 | hello | 4 | has uploaded a track | 4 | time | | T.2 | 3 | bye | 3 | has some news | 3 | time | | t.1 | 4 | more | 4 | has some news | 4 | time | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ That's a very basic example but does outline what happens. If you look at the third row the URL is repeated when there is a different status. This is what I want to happen; +-------------------------------------------------------+ | URL or Status | ID | action | timestamp | +-------------------------------------------------------+ | T.1 | 4 | has uploaded a track | time | | hello | 3 | has some news | time | | bye | 4 | has some news | time | +-------------------------------------------------------+ Please notice that the the url (in this case the mock one is T.1) is shown when the action is has uploaded a track. This is very important. The action in the events table is inserted on trigger of a status or track insert. If a new track is inserted the action is 'has uploaded a track' and you guess what it is for a status. The ID and timestamp is also inserted into the events table at this point. Note: There are more tables that go into the query, 3 more in fact, but I have left them out for simplicity.

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• Is this a good way to do a game loop for an iPhone game?

  - by Danny Tuppeny

  Hi all, I'm new to iPhone dev, but trying to build a 2D game. I was following a book, but the game loop it created basically said: function gameLoop update() render() sleep(1/30th second) gameLoop The reasoning was that this would run at 30fps. However, this seemed a little mental, because if my frame took 1/30th second, then it would run at 15fps (since it'll spend as much time sleeping as updating). So, I did some digging and found the CADisplayLink class which would sync calls to my gameLoop function to the refresh rate (or a fraction of it). I can't find many samples of it, so I'm posting here for a code review :-) It seems to work as expected, and it includes passing the elapsed (frame) time into the Update method so my logic can be framerate-independant (however I can't actually find in the docs what CADisplayLink would do if my frame took more than its allowed time to run - I'm hoping it just does its best to catch up, and doesn't crash!). // // GameAppDelegate.m // // Created by Danny Tuppeny on 10/03/2010. // Copyright Danny Tuppeny 2010. All rights reserved. // #import "GameAppDelegate.h" #import "GameViewController.h" #import "GameStates/gsSplash.h" @implementation GameAppDelegate @synthesize window; @synthesize viewController; - (void) applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application { // Create an instance of the first GameState (Splash Screen) [self doStateChange:[gsSplash class]]; // Set up the game loop displayLink = [CADisplayLink displayLinkWithTarget:self selector:@selector(gameLoop)]; [displayLink setFrameInterval:2]; [displayLink addToRunLoop:[NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] forMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode]; } - (void) gameLoop { // Calculate how long has passed since the previous frame CFTimeInterval currentFrameTime = [displayLink timestamp]; CFTimeInterval elapsed = 0; // For the first frame, we want to pass 0 (since we haven't elapsed any time), so only // calculate this in the case where we're not the first frame if (lastFrameTime != 0) { elapsed = currentFrameTime - lastFrameTime; } // Keep track of this frames time (so we can calculate this next time) lastFrameTime = currentFrameTime; NSLog([NSString stringWithFormat:@"%f", elapsed]); // Call update, passing the elapsed time in [((GameState*)viewController.view) Update:elapsed]; } - (void) doStateChange:(Class)state { // Remove the previous GameState if (viewController.view != nil) { [viewController.view removeFromSuperview]; [viewController.view release]; } // Create the new GameState viewController.view = [[state alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, IPHONE_WIDTH, IPHONE_HEIGHT) andManager:self]; // Now set as visible [window addSubview:viewController.view]; [window makeKeyAndVisible]; } - (void) dealloc { [viewController release]; [window release]; [super dealloc]; } @end Any feedback would be appreciated :-) PS. Bonus points if you can tell me why all the books use "viewController.view" but for everything else seem to use "[object name]" format. Why not [viewController view]?

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• ASP.Net Web Farm Monitoring

  - by cisellis

  I am looking for suggestions on doing some simple monitoring of an ASP.Net web farm as close to real-time as possible. The objectives of this question are to: Identify the best way to monitor several Windows Server production boxes during short (minutes long) period of ridiculous load Receive near-real-time feedback on a few key metrics about each box. These are simple metrics available via WMI such as CPU, Memory and Disk Paging. I am defining my time constraints as soon as possible with 120 seconds delayed being the absolute upper limit. Monitor whether any given box is up (with "up" being defined as responding web requests in a reasonable amount of time) Here are more details, things I've tried, etc. I am not interested in logging. We have logging solutions in place. I have looked at solutions such as ELMAH which don't provide much in the way of hardware monitoring and are not visible across an entire web farm. ASP.Net Health Monitoring is too broad, focuses too much on logging and is not acceptable for deep analysis. We are on Amazon Web Services and we have looked into CloudWatch. It looks great but messages in the forum indicate that the metrics are often a few minutes behind, with one thread citing 2 minutes as the absolute soonest you could expect to receive the feedback. This would be good to have for later analysis but does not help us real-time Stuff like JetBrains profiler is good for testing but again, not helpful during real-time monitoring. The closest out-of-box solution I've seen is Nagios which is free and appears to measure key indicators on any kind of box, including Windows. However, it appears to require a Linux box to run itself on and a good deal of manual configuration. I'd prefer to not spend my time mining config files and then be up a creek when it fails in production since Linux is not my main (or even secondary) environment. Are there any out-of-box solutions that I am missing? Obviously a windows-based solution that is easy to setup is ideal. I don't require many bells and whistles. In the absence of an out-of-box solution, it seems easy for me to write something simple to handle what I need. I've been thinking a simple client-server setup where the server requests a few WMI metrics from each client over http and sticks them in a database. We could then monitor the metrics via a query or a dashboard or something. If the client doesn't respond, it's effectively down. Any problems with this, best practices, or other ideas? Thanks for any help/feedback.

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• Mootools - how to destroy a class instance

  - by Rob

  What I'm trying to do is create a class that I can quickly attach to links, that will fetch and display a thumbnail preview of the document being linked to. Now, I am focusing on ease of use and portability here, I want to simply add a mouseover event to links like this: <a href="some-document.pdf" onmouseover="new TestClass(this)">Testing</a> I realize there are other ways I can go about this that would solve my issue here, and I may end up having to do that, but right now my goal is to implement this as above. I don't want to manually add a mouseout event to each link, and I don't want code anywhere other than within the class (and the mouseover event creating the class instance). The code: TestClass = new Class({ initialize: function(anchor) { this.anchor = $(anchor); if(!this.anchor) return; if(!window.zzz) window.zzz = 0; this.id = ++window.zzz; this.anchor.addEvent('mouseout', function() { // i need to get a reference to this function this.hide(); }.bind(this)); this.show(); }, show: function() { // TODO: cool web 2.0 stuff here! }, hide: function() { alert(this.id); //this.removeEvent('mouseout', ?); // need reference to the function to remove /*** this works, but what if there are unrelated mouseout events? and the class instance still exists! ***/ //this.anchor.removeEvents('mouseout'); //delete(this); // does not work ! //this = null; // invalid assignment! //this = undefined; // invalid assignment! } }); What currently happens with the above code: 1st time out: alerts 1 2nd time out: alerts 1, 2 3rd time out: alerts 1, 2, 3 etc Desired behavior: 1st time out: alerts 1 2nd time out: alerts 2 3rd time out: alerts 3 etc The problem is, each time I mouse over the link, I'm creating a new class instance and appending a new mouseout event for that instance. The class instance also remains in memory indefinitely. On mouseout I need to remove the mouseout event and destroy the class instance, so on subsequent mouseovers we are starting fresh.

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• Release Process Improvements

  - by wallismark

  The process of creating a new build and releasing it to production is a critical step in the SDLC but it is often left as an afterthought and varies greatly from one company to the next. I'm hoping people will share improvements they have made to this process in their organisation so we can all takes steps to 'reduce the pain'. So the question is, specify one painful/time consuming part of your release process and what did you do to improve it? My example: at a previous employer all developers made database changes on one common development database. Then when it came to release time, we used Redgate's SQL Compare to generate a huge script from the differences between the Dev and QA databases. This works reasonably well but the problems with this approach are:- ALL changes in the Dev database are included, some of which may still be 'works in progress'. Sometimes developers made conflicting changes (that were not noticed until the release was in production) It was a time consuming and manual process to create and validate the script (by validate I mean, try to weed out issues like problem 1 and 2). When there were problems with the script (eg the order in which things were run such as creating a record which relies on a foreign key record which is in the script but not yet run) it took time to 'tweak' it so it ran smoothly. It's not an ideal scenario for Continuous Integration. So the solution was:- Enforce a policy of all changes to the database must be scripted. A naming convention was important for ensuring the correct running order of the scripts. Create/Use a tool to run the scripts at release time. Developers had their own copy of the database do develop against (so there was no more 'stepping on each others toes') The next release after we started this process was much faster with fewer problems, indeed the only problems found were due to people 'breaking the rules', eg not creating a script. Once the issues with releasing to QA were fixed, when it came time to release to production it was very smooth. We applied a few other changes (like introducing CI) but this was the most significant, overall we reduced release time from around 3 hours down to a max of 10-15 minutes.

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• Problem storing text to a String[] and then storing the array to a Vector.

  - by hatboysam

  OK so for background I've only been using Java for a little more than a week and I am making a basic GUI "Recipe Book" application just to test out some of the techniques I've learned. Currently I'm working on the "Add New Recipe" page that allows the user to make a new recipe by adding ingredients one at a time. The ingredients have 3 attributes: Name, amount, and unit (like cups, oz, etc) that come from two text fields and a combo box respectively. The 3 values are stores as strings to a String array that represents the ingredient, then the arrays are stored in a vector that holds all of the ingredients for one recipe. When an ingredient is added, the user first types in the 3 necessary values into empty boxes/combo box dropdown and then clicks "Add Ingredient". Here is my code for when the button is clicked: public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) { Object source = event.getSource(); if (source == addIngredientButton) { //make sure 3 ingredient fields are not blank if (!ingredientNameField.getText().equals("") && !ingredientAmountField.getText().equals("") && !ingredientUnitDropdown.getSelectedItem().equals("")) { tempIngredientsArray[0] = ingredientNameField.getText(); //set ingredient name to first position in array tempIngredientsArray[1] = ingredientAmountField.getText(); //set ingredient amount to second position in array tempIngredientsArray[2] = (String) ingredientUnitDropdown.getSelectedItem(); //set ingredient unit to third position in array int ingredientsVectorSize = tempRecipe.ingredientsVector.size(); tempRecipe.ingredientsVector.add(this.tempIngredientsArray); //why would it matter if this and previous statement were switched for (int k = 0; k < ingredientsVectorSize + 1; k++ ) { liveIngredientsListArea.append("\n" + tempRecipe.makeIngredientSentence(k)); System.out.println(Arrays.toString(tempIngredientsArray)); //shows that tempIngredientsArray gets messed up each time } } Now here's the really strange problem I've been having. The first time the user adds an ingredient everything works fine. The second time, the String[] for that ingredient seems to be duplicated, and the third time it's triplicated. Aka the first time it runs the System.out.println might return "{Sugar, 3, Cups}" and the second time it will return "{Flour, 2, Oz.} {Flour, 2, Oz.}" etc. What's causing this strange problem? All help greatly appreciated, let me know if you need any clarification.

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• sql to xml using linq - nested collections

  - by nelsonwebs

  I have a table of data that looks something like this. name, hour, price1, price2, price3, price4, price5 fred, 3, 12.5, 13.5, 14, 15, 16 dave, 6, 8, 12, 18, 20.2, 25 fred, 6, 10, 11, 14, 15, 19.7 This table needs to be output to an xml file that looks like this. <timeCost> <person name="fred"> <time hour="5"> <cost price="12.5" /> <cost price="13.5" /> <cost price="14" /> <cost price="15" /> <cost price="16" /> </time> <time hour="6"> <cost price="10" /> <cost price="11" /> <cost price="14" /> <cost price="15" /> <cost price="19.7" /> </time> </person> <person name="dave"> <time hour="6"> <cost price="8" /> <cost price="12" /> <cost price="18" /> <cost price="20.2" /> <cost price="25" /> </time> </person> </timeCost> I have a linq query to get the data from SQL something like this. // initialize data context var people = from p in dc.people orderby p.name, p.hour select p; However, I'm having trouble writing the xml out using linq (csharp). Specifically, the problem is I don't know how to deal with having multiple time nodes under each name node (nested loops/collections). How can this be done? This is a sql 08 ent db if it matters to anyone.

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• GUI Application becomes unresponsive while http request is being done

  - by JW

  I have just made my first proper little desktop GUI application that basically wraps a GUI (php-gtk) interface around a SimpleTest Web Test case to make it act as a remote testing client. Each time the local The Web Test case runs, it sends an HTTP request to another SimpleTest case (that has an XHTML interface) sitting on my server. The application, allows me to run one local test that collates information from multiple remote tests. It just has a 'Start Test' button, 'Stop Test' button and a setting to increase/decrease the number of remote tests conducted in each HTTP Request. Each test-run takes about an hour to complete. The trouble is, most of the time the application is making http requests. Furthermore, whenever an HTTP Request is being made, the application's GUI is unresponsive. I have taken to making the application wait a few seconds (iterating through the Gtk::main_iteration ) between requests in order to give the user time to re-size the window, press the Stop button, etc. But, this makes the whole test run take a lot a longer than is necessary. <?php require_once('simpletest/web_tester.php'); class TestRemoteTestingClient extends WebTestCase { function testRunIterations() { ... $this->assertTrue($this->get($nextUrl), 'getting from pointer:'. $this->_remoteMementoPointer); $this->assertResponse(200, "checking response for " . $nextUrl ); $this->assertText('RemoteNodeGreen'); $this->doGtkIterationsForMinNSeconds($secs); ... } public function doGtkIterationsForMinNSeconds($secs) { $this->appendStatusMessage("Waiting " . $secs); $start = time(); $end = $start + $secs; while( (time() < $end) ) { $this->appendStatusMessage("Waiting " . ($end - time())); while(gtk::events_pending()) Gtk::main_iteration(); } } } Is there a way to keep the application responsive whilst, at the same time making an HTTP request? I am considering splitting the application into two, where: Test Controller Application - Acts as a settings-writer / report-reader and this writes to settings file and reads a report file. Test Runner Application - Acts as a settings-reader / report-writer and, for each iteration reads the settings file, Runs the test, then write a report. So to tell it to close down - I'd: Press the Stop Button on the 'Test Controller Application', which writes to the settings file, which is read by the 'Test Runner Application' which stops, then writes to the report file to say it stopped the 'Test Controller Application' reads the report and updates the status and so on... However, before I go ahead and split the application in two - I am wondering if there is any other obvious way to deal with, this issue. I suspect it is probably quite common and a well-trodden path. Also is there an easier way to send messages between two applications?

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• Serious Memory Clash: Variables clashing in C

  - by Soham

  int main(int argc, char*argv[]) { Message* newMessage; Asset* Check; //manipulation and initialization of Check, so that it holds proper values. newMessage = parser("N,2376,01/02/2011 09:15:01.342,JPASSOCIAT FUTSTK 24FEB2011,B,84.05,2000,0,0",newMessage); // MessageProcess(newMessage,AssetMap); printf("LAST TRADE ADDRESS %p LAST TRADE TIME %s\n",Check->TradeBook,Check->Time); } Message* parser(char *message,Message* new_Message) { char a[9][256]; char* tmp =message; bool inQuote=0; int counter=0; int counter2=0; new_Message = (Message*)malloc(sizeof(Message)); while(*tmp!='\0') { switch(*tmp) { case ',': if(!inQuote) { a[counter][counter2]='\0'; counter++; counter2=0; } break; case '"': inQuote=!inQuote; break; default: a[counter][counter2]=*tmp; counter2++; break; } tmp++; } a[counter][counter2]='\0'; new_Message->type = *a[0]; new_Message->Time = &a[2][11]; new_Message->asset = a[3]; if(*a[4]=='S') new_Message->BS = 0; else new_Message->BS = 1; new_Message->price1=atof(a[5]); new_Message->shares1=atol(a[6]); new_Message->price2=atof(a[7]); new_Message->shares2=atol(a[8]); new_Message->idNum = atoi(a[1]); return(new_Message); } Here there is a serious memory clash, in two variables of different scope. I have investigated using gdb and it seems the address of new_Message->Time is equalling to the address of Check->Time. They both are structures of different types I am trying to resolve this issue, because, when parser changes the value of new_Message->Time it manipulates the contents of Check-Time Please do suggest how to solve this problem. I have lost(spent) around 10 hours and counting to resolve this issue, and tons of hair. Soham

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• A shortest path problem with superheroes and intergalactic journeys

  - by Dman

  You are a super-hero in the year 2222 and you are faced with this great challenge: starting from your home planet Ilop you must try to reach Acinhet or else your planet will be destroyed by evil green little monsters. To do this you are given a map of the universe: there are N planets and M inter-planetary connections ( bidirectional ) that bind these planets. Each connection requires a certain time and a certain amount of fuel in order for you to cover the connection from one planet to another. The total time spent going from one planet to another is obtained by multiplying the time past to cover each connection between all the planets you go through. There are some "key planets", that allow you to refuel if you arrive on those certain "key planets". A "key planet" is the planet with the property that if it disappears the road between at least two planets would be lost.(In the example posted below with the input/output files such a "key planet" is 2 because without it the road to 7 would be lost) When you start your mission you are given the possibility of choosing between K ships each with its own maximum fuel capacity. The goal is to find the SHORTEST TIME CONSUMING path but also choose the ship with the minimum fuel capacity that can cover that shortest path(this means that if more ships can cover the shortest path you choose the one with the minimum fuel capacity). Because the minimum time can be a rather large number (over long long int) you are asked to provide only the last 6 digits of the number. For a better understanding of the task, here is an example of input/output files: INPUT: mission.in 7 8 6 1 4 6 5 9 8 7 10 1 2 7 8 1 4 14 9 1 5 3 1 2 3 1 2 2 7 7 1 3 4 2 2 4 6 4 1 5 6 3 7 On the first line (in order): N M K On the second line :the number for the starting planet and the finishing planet On the third line :K numbers that represent the capacities of the ships you can choose from Then you have M lines, all of them have the same structure: Xi Yi Ti Fi-which means that there is a connection between Xi and Yi and you can cover the distance from Xi to Yi in Ti time and with a Fi fuel consumption. OUTPUT:mission.out 000014 8 1 2 3 4 On the first line:the minimum time and fuel consumption; On the second line :the path Restrictions: 2 = N = 1 000 1 = M = 30 000 1 = K = 10 000 Any suggestions or ideas of how this problem might be solved would be most welcomed.

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• Java - strange problem storing text to a String[] and then storing the array to a Vector. Help plea

  - by hatboysam

  OK so for background I've only been using Java for a little more than a week and I am making a basic GUI "Recipe Book" application just to test out some of the techniques I've learned. Currently I'm working on the "Add New Recipe" page that allows the user to make a new recipe by adding ingredients one at a time. The ingredients have 3 attributes: Name, amount, and unit (like cups, oz, etc) that come from two text fields and a combo box respectively. The 3 values are stores as strings to a String array that represents the ingredient, then the arrays are stored in a vector that holds all of the ingredients for one recipe. When an ingredient is added, the user first types in the 3 necessary values into empty boxes/combo box dropdown and then clicks "Add Ingredient". Here is my code for when the button is clicked: public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) { Object source = event.getSource(); if (source == addIngredientButton) { //make sure 3 ingredient fields are not blank if (!ingredientNameField.getText().equals("") && !ingredientAmountField.getText().equals("") && !ingredientUnitDropdown.getSelectedItem().equals("")) { tempIngredientsArray[0] = ingredientNameField.getText(); //set ingredient name to first position in array tempIngredientsArray[1] = ingredientAmountField.getText(); //set ingredient amount to second position in array tempIngredientsArray[2] = (String) ingredientUnitDropdown.getSelectedItem(); //set ingredient unit to third position in array int ingredientsVectorSize = tempRecipe.ingredientsVector.size(); tempRecipe.ingredientsVector.add(this.tempIngredientsArray); //why would it matter if this and previous statement were switched for (int k = 0; k < ingredientsVectorSize + 1; k++ ) { liveIngredientsListArea.append("\n" + tempRecipe.makeIngredientSentence(k)); System.out.println(Arrays.toString(tempIngredientsArray)); //shows that tempIngredientsArray gets messed up each time } } Now here's the really strange problem I've been having. The first time the user adds an ingredient everything works fine. The second time, the String[] for that ingredient seems to be duplicated, and the third time it's triplicated. Aka the first time it runs the System.out.println might return "{Sugar, 3, Cups}" and the second time it will return "{Flour, 2, Oz.} {Flour, 2, Oz.}" etc. What's causing this strange problem? All help greatly appreciated, let me know if you need any clarification.

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• How to make a composite Zend Form Element that includes a Dojo Field

  - by Joe

  I used the zendcast video to get me this far. The form is properly displayed. However, I need to change the display order box into a number box of zend dojo type. I cannot figure it out. Even help with examples would be great. <?php class My_View_Helper_CategoryDetailElement extends Zend_View_Helper_FormElement { protected $html = ''; public function CategoryDetailElement($name, $value = null, $attribs = null) { $type = $description = $displayOrder = $time = ''; if($value) { $type = $value->type; $description = $value->description; $displayOrder = $value->displayOrder; $time = $value->time; } $helper = new Zend_View_Helper_FormText(); $helper->setView($this->view); $helper_label = new Zend_View_Helper_FormLabel(); $helper_label->setView($this->view); $helper_select = new Zend_View_Helper_FormSelect(); $helper_select->setView($this->view); $helper_textarea = new Zend_View_Helper_FormTextarea(); $helper_textarea->setView($this->view); $this->html .= $helper_label->formLabel($name . '[type]', 'Type: ', array()); $this->html .= $helper_select->formSelect($name . '[type]', $type, array(), array('individual'=>'individual', 'team'=>'team')); $this->html .= "<br />"; $this->html .= $helper_label->formLabel($name . '[description]', 'Description: ', array()); $this->html .= $helper_textarea->formTextarea($name . '[description]', $description, array()); $this->html .= "<br />"; $this->html .= $helper_label->formLabel($name . '[displayOrder]', 'Display Order: ', array()); $this->html .= $helper->formText($name . '[displayOrder]', $displayOrder, array()); $this->html .= "<br />"; $this->html .= $helper_label->formLabel($name . '[time]', 'Time: ', array()); $this->html .= $helper->formText($name . '[time]', $time, array()); return $this->html; } } ?>

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• Reorganizing MySQL table to multiple rows by timestamp.

  - by Ben Burleson

  OK MySQL Wizards: I have a table of position data from multiple probes defined as follows: +----------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +----------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | time | datetime | NO | | NULL | | | probe_id | char(3) | NO | | NULL | | | position | float | NO | | NULL | | +----------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+ A simple select outputs something like this: +---------------------+----------+----------+ | time | probe_id | position | +---------------------+----------+----------+ | 2010-05-05 14:16:42 | 00A | 0.0045 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:42 | 00B | 0.0005 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:42 | 00C | 0.002 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:42 | 01A | 0 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:42 | 01B | 0.001 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:42 | 01C | 0.0025 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:43 | 00A | 0.0045 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:43 | 00B | 0.0005 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:43 | 00C | 0.002 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:43 | 01A | 0 | | . | . | . | | . | . | . | | . | . | . | +---------------------+----------+----------+ However, I'd like to output something like this: +---------------------+--------+--------+-------+-----+-------+--------+ | time | 00A | 00B | 00C | 01A | 01B | 01C | +---------------------+--------+--------+-------+-----+-------+--------+ | 2010-05-05 14:16:42 | 0.0045 | 0.0005 | 0.002 | 0 | 0.001 | 0.0025 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:43 | 0.0045 | 0.0005 | 0.002 | 0 | 0.001 | 0.0025 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:44 | 0.0045 | 0.0005 | 0.002 | 0 | 0.001 | 0.0025 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:45 | 0.0045 | 0.0005 | 0.002 | 0 | 0.001 | 0.0025 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:46 | 0.0045 | 0.0005 | 0.002 | 0 | 0.001 | 0.0025 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:47 | 0.0045 | 0.0005 | 0.002 | 0 | 0.001 | 0.0025 | | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | +---------------------+--------+--------+-------+-----+-------+--------+ Ideally, the different probe position columns are dynamically generated based on data in the table. Is this possible, or am I pulling my hair out for nothing? I've tried GROUP BY time with GROUP_CONCAT that roughly gets the data out, but I can't separate that output into probe_id columns. mysql SELECT time, GROUP_CONCAT(probe_id), GROUP_CONCAT(position) FROM MG41 GROUP BY time LIMIT 10; +---------------------+-------------------------+------------------------------------+ | time | GROUP_CONCAT(probe_id) | GROUP_CONCAT(position) | +---------------------+-------------------------+------------------------------------+ | 2010-05-05 14:16:42 | 00A,00B,00C,01A,01B,01C | 0.0045,0.0005,0.002,0,0.001,0.0025 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:43 | 01C,01B,01A,00C,00B,00A | 0.0025,0.001,0,0.002,0.0005,0.0045 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:44 | 01C,01B,01A,00C,00B,00A | 0.0025,0.001,0,0.002,0.0005,0.0045 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:45 | 01C,01B,01A,00C,00B,00A | 0.0025,0.001,0,0.002,0.0005,0.0045 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:46 | 01C,01B,01A,00C,00B,00A | 0.0025,0.001,0,0.002,0.0005,0.0045 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:47 | 01C,01B,01A,00C,00B,00A | 0.0025,0.001,0,0.002,0.0005,0.0045 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:48 | 01C,01B,01A,00C,00B,00A | 0.0025,0.001,0,0.002,0.0005,0.0045 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:49 | 01C,01B,01A,00C,00B,00A | 0.0025,0.001,0,0.002,0.0005,0.0045 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:50 | 01C,01B,01A,00C,00B,00A | 0.0025,0.001,0,0.002,0.0005,0.0045 | | 2010-05-05 14:16:51 | 01C,01B,01A,00C,00B,00A | 0.0025,0.001,0,0.002,0.0005,0.0045 | +---------------------+-------------------------+------------------------------------+

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• Catch Multiple Custom Exceptions? - C++

  - by Alex

  Hi all, I'm a student in my first C++ programming class, and I'm working on a project where we have to create multiple custom exception classes, and then in one of our event handlers, use a try/catch block to handle them appropriately. My question is: How do I catch my multiple custom exceptions in my try/catch block? GetMessage() is a custom method in my exception classes that returns the exception explanation as a std::string. Below I've included all the relevant code from my project. Thanks for your help! try/catch block // This is in one of my event handlers, newEnd is a wxTextCtrl try { first.ValidateData(); newEndT = first.ComputeEndTime(); *newEnd << newEndT; } catch (// don't know what do to here) { wxMessageBox(_(e.GetMessage()), _("Something Went Wrong!"), wxOK | wxICON_INFORMATION, this);; } ValidateData() Method void Time::ValidateData() { int startHours, startMins, endHours, endMins; startHours = startTime / MINUTES_TO_HOURS; startMins = startTime % MINUTES_TO_HOURS; endHours = endTime / MINUTES_TO_HOURS; endMins = endTime % MINUTES_TO_HOURS; if (!(startHours <= HOURS_MAX && startHours >= HOURS_MIN)) throw new HourOutOfRangeException("Beginning Time Hour Out of Range!"); if (!(endHours <= HOURS_MAX && endHours >= HOURS_MIN)) throw new HourOutOfRangeException("Ending Time Hour Out of Range!"); if (!(startMins <= MINUTE_MAX && startMins >= MINUTE_MIN)) throw new MinuteOutOfRangeException("Starting Time Minute Out of Range!"); if (!(endMins <= MINUTE_MAX && endMins >= MINUTE_MIN)) throw new MinuteOutOfRangeException("Ending Time Minute Out of Range!"); if(!(timeDifference <= P_MAX && timeDifference >= P_MIN)) throw new PercentageOutOfRangeException("Percentage Change Out of Range!"); if (!(startTime < endTime)) throw new StartEndException("Start Time Cannot Be Less Than End Time!"); } Just one of my custom exception classes, the others have the same structure as this one class HourOutOfRangeException { public: // param constructor // initializes message to passed paramater // preconditions - param will be a string // postconditions - message will be initialized // params a string // no return type HourOutOfRangeException(string pMessage) : message(pMessage) {} // GetMessage is getter for var message // params none // preconditions - none // postconditions - none // returns string string GetMessage() { return message; } // destructor ~HourOutOfRangeException() {} private: string message; };

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• Generate a list of file names based on month and year arithmetic

  - by MacUsers

  How can I list the numbers 01 to 12 (one for each of the 12 months) in such a way so that the current month always comes last where the oldest one is first. In other words, if the number is grater than the current month, it's from the previous year. e.g. 02 is Feb, 2011 (the current month right now), 03 is March, 2010 and 09 is Sep, 2010 but 01 is Jan, 2011. In this case, I'd like to have [09, 03, 01, 02]. This is what I'm doing to determine the year: for inFile in os.listdir('.'): if inFile.isdigit(): month = months[int(inFile)] if int(inFile) <= int(strftime("%m")): year = strftime("%Y") else: year = int(strftime("%Y"))-1 mnYear = month + ", " + str(year) I don't have a clue what to do next. What should I do here? Update: I think, I better upload the entire script for better understanding. #!/usr/bin/env python import os, sys from time import strftime from calendar import month_abbr vGroup = {} vo = "group_lhcb" SI00_fig = float(2.478) months = tuple(month_abbr) print "\n%-12s\t%10s\t%8s\t%10s" % ('VOs','CPU-time','CPU-time','kSI2K-hrs') print "%-12s\t%10s\t%8s\t%10s" % ('','(in Sec)','(in Hrs)','(*2.478)') print "=" * 58 for inFile in os.listdir('.'): if inFile.isdigit(): readFile = open(inFile, 'r') lines = readFile.readlines() readFile.close() month = months[int(inFile)] if int(inFile) <= int(strftime("%m")): year = strftime("%Y") else: year = int(strftime("%Y"))-1 mnYear = month + ", " + str(year) for line in lines[2:]: if line.find(vo)==0: g, i = line.split() s = vGroup.get(g, 0) vGroup[g] = s + int(i) sumHrs = ((vGroup[g]/60)/60) sumSi2k = sumHrs*SI00_fig print "%-12s\t%10s\t%8s\t%10.2f" % (mnYear,vGroup[g],sumHrs,sumSi2k) del vGroup[g] When I run the script, I get this: [root@serv07 usage]# ./test.py VOs CPU-time CPU-time kSI2K-hrs (in Sec) (in Hrs) (*2.478) ================================================== Jan, 2011 211201372 58667 145376.83 Dec, 2010 5064337 1406 3484.07 Feb, 2011 17506049 4862 12048.04 Sep, 2010 210874275 58576 145151.33 As I said in the original post, I like the result to be in this order instead: Sep, 2010 210874275 58576 145151.33 Dec, 2010 5064337 1406 3484.07 Jan, 2011 211201372 58667 145376.83 Feb, 2011 17506049 4862 12048.04 The files in the source directory reads like this: [root@serv07 usage]# ls -l total 3632 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1144972 Feb 9 19:23 01 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 556630 Feb 13 09:11 02 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 443782 Feb 11 17:23 02.bak -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1144556 Feb 14 09:30 09 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 370822 Feb 9 19:24 12 Did I give a better picture now? Sorry for not being very clear in the first place. Cheers!! Update @Mark Ransom This is the result from Mark's suggestion: [root@serv07 usage]# ./test.py VOs CPU-time CPU-time kSI2K-hrs (in Sec) (in Hrs) (*2.478) ========================================================== Dec, 2010 5064337 1406 3484.07 Sep, 2010 210874275 58576 145151.33 Feb, 2011 17506049 4862 12048.04 Jan, 2011 211201372 58667 145376.83 As I said before, I'm looking for the result to b printed in this order: Sep, 2010 - Dec, 2010 - Jan, 2011 - Feb, 2011 Cheers!!

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• Postgres Stored procedure using iBatis

  - by Om Yadav

  --- The error occurred while applying a parameter map. --- Check the newSubs-InlineParameterMap. --- Check the statement (query failed). --- Cause: org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: ERROR: wrong record type supplied in RETURN NEXT Where: PL/pgSQL function "getnewsubs" line 34 at return next the function detail is as below.... CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION getnewsubs(timestamp without time zone, timestamp without time zone, integer) RETURNS SETOF record AS $BODY$declare v_fromdt alias for $1; v_todt alias for $2; v_domno alias for $3; v_cursor refcursor; v_rec record; v_cpno bigint; v_actno int; v_actname varchar(50); v_actid varchar(100); v_cpntypeid varchar(100); v_mrp double precision; v_domname varchar(100); v_usedt timestamp without time zone; v_expirydt timestamp without time zone; v_createdt timestamp without time zone; v_ctno int; v_phone varchar; begin open v_cursor for select cpno,c.actno,usedt from cpnusage c inner join account s on s.actno=c.actno where usedt = $1 and usedt < $2 and validdomstat(s.domno,v_domno) order by c.usedt; fetch v_cursor into v_cpno,v_actno,v_usedt; while found loop if isactivation(v_cpno,v_actno,v_usedt) IS TRUE then select into v_actno,v_actname,v_actid,v_cpntypeid,v_mrp,v_domname,v_ctno,v_cpno,v_usedt,v_expirydt,v_createdt,v_phone a.actno,a.actname as name,a.actid as actid,c.descr as cpntypeid,l.mrp as mrp,s.domname as domname,c.ctno as ctno,b.cpno,b.usedt,b.expirydt,d.createdt,a.phone from account a inner join cpnusage b on a.actno=b.actno inner join cpn d on b.cpno=d.cpno inner join cpntype c on d.ctno=c.ctno inner join ssgdom s on a.domno=s.domno left join price_class l ON l.price_class_id=b.price_class_id where validdomstat(a.domno,v_domno) and b.cpno=v_cpno and b.actno=v_actno; select into v_rec v_actno,v_actname,v_actid,v_cpntypeid,v_mrp,v_domname,v_ctno,v_cpno,v_usedt,v_expirydt,v_createdt,v_phone; return next v_rec; end if; fetch v_cursor into v_cpno,v_actno,v_usedt; end loop; return ; end;$BODY$ LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' VOLATILE; ALTER FUNCTION getnewsubs(timestamp without time zone, timestamp without time zone, integer) OWNER TO radius If i am running the function from the console it is running fine and giving me the correct response. But when using through java causing the above error. Can ay body help in it..Its very urgent. Please response as soon as possible. Thanks in advance.

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• How To Send A Confirmation Number To Others And Myself?

  - by user2913307

  On my website I have a reservation form. Once someone clicks submit a confirmation number comes up (that number is different everytime). I get an e-mail with everything the person filled out on my reservation form but I want to know their confirmation number as well. RANDOM NUMBER CODE $(document).ready(function() { var ranval = Math.floor((Math.random()*10000)+1); $('input[name=lblrand]').val(ranval); // bind 'myForm' and provide a simple callback function $('#myForm').ajaxForm(function() { alert("Your Message has been sent!Your Form Registration Number is: "+ ranval); $('#myForm').resetForm(); WHAT GETS E-MAILED TO ME $('#rSubmit').click(function(){ var data = {}; data.to = "[email protected]"; data.from = "[email protected]>"; data.subject = "New Reservation"; data.message = "New Reservation from Website \n"+ '\n First Name : '+$('#name').val()+ '\n Last Name : '+$('#lastname').val() + '\n Confirmation : '+$('#lblrand').val () + '\n Coupon Code : '+$('#coupon').val() + '\n Company Name : '+$('#company').val() + '\n Phone Number : '+$('#phone').val() + '\n Street Address : '+$('#street').val() + '\n Pick-Up City : '+$('#city').val()+ '\n Pick-Up State : '+$('#state').val() + '\n Pick-Up Zip : '+$('#zip').val() + '\n Date : '+$('#calendar').val()+ '\n Time : '+$('#time').val() + '\n Time : '+$('#time2').val() + '\n Time : '+$('#time3').val() + '\n Airport : '+$('#airport').val() + '\n Airline : '+$('#airline').val() + '\n Flight # : '+$('#fnumber').val() + '\n Stops : '+$('#hstops').val() + '\n Stops Info : '+$('#info').val() + '\n Passengers : '+$('#passengers').val() + '\n Luggages : '+$('#luggages').val()+ '\n Car Seat : '+$('#seat').val()+ '\n Drop-Off Street : '+$('#dostreet').val() + '\n Drop-Off City : '+$('#docity').val()+ '\n Drop-Off State : '+$('#dostate').val() + '\n Drop-Off Zip : '+$('#dozip').val() + '\n D.O Airport : '+$('#doairport').val() + '\n D.O Airline : '+$('#doairline').val() + '\n Flight # : '+$('#dofnumber').val() + '\n Date : '+$('#calendar2').val()+ '\n Time : '+$('#rtime').val() + '\n Time : '+$('#rtime2').val() + '\n Time : '+$('#rtime3').val() + '\n Return Street : '+$('#rtstreet').val() + '\n Return City : '+$('#rtcity').val()+ '\n Return State : '+$('#rtstate').val() + '\n Return Zip : '+$('#rtzip').val() + '\n Return Airport : '+$('#rtairport').val() + '\n Return Airline : '+$('#rtairline').val() + '\n Return Flight # : '+$('#rtfnumber').val() + '\n Payment Type : '+$('#payment').val() + '\n Card Number : '+$('#creditcardno').val() + '\n Exp. Date : '+$('#expirydate').val() + '\n Exp. Date : '+$('#expirydate2').val() ; Also, if there is a way when this information gets e-mailed to me if I can put it in a table so it could come up more organized. Any help, tips, advice is appreciated. ALSO, check out my website and the form for yourself at http://www.greatlimoservice.com

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• ASP.NET MVC 4/Web API Single Page App for Mobile Devices ... Needs Authentication

  - by lmttag

  We have developed an ASP.NET MVC 4/Web API single page, mobile website (also using jQuery Mobile) that is intended to be accessed only from mobile devices (e.g., iPads, iPhones, Android tables and phones, etc.), not desktop browsers. This mobile website will be hosted internally, like an intranet site. However, since we’re accessing it from mobile devices, we can’t use Windows authentication. We still need to know which user (and their role) is logging in to the mobile website app. We tried simply using ASP.NET’s forms authentication and membership provider, but couldn’t get it working exactly the way we wanted. What we need is for the user to be prompted for a user name and password only on the first time they access the site on their mobile device. After they enter a correct user name and password and have been authenticated once, each subsequent time they access the site they should just go right in. They shouldn’t have to re-enter their credentials (i.e., something needs to be saved locally to each device to identify the user after the first time). This is where we had troubles. Everything worked as expected the first time. That is, the user was prompted to enter a user name and password, and, after doing that, was authenticated and allowed into the site. The problem is every time after the browser was closed on the mobile device, the device and user were not know and the user had to re-enter user name and password. We tried lots of things too. We tried setting persistent cookies in JavaScript. No good. The cookies weren’t there to be read the second time. We tried manually setting persistent cookies from ASP.NET. No good. We, of course, used FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(model.UserName, true); as part of the form authentication framework. No good. We tried using HTML5 local storage. No good. No matter what we tried, if the user was on a mobile device, they would have to log in every single time. (Note: we’ve tried on an iPad and iPhone running both iOS 5.1 and 6.0, with Safari configure to allow cookies, and we’ve tried on Android 2.3.4.) Is there some trick to getting a scenario like this working? Or, do we have to write some sort of custom authentication mechanism? If so, how? And, what? Or, should we use something like claims-based authentication and WIF? Or??? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

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• Is your team is a high-performing team?

  As a child I can remember looking out of the car window as my father drove along the Interstate in Florida while seeing prisoners wearing bright orange jump suits and prison guards keeping a watchful eye on them. The prisoners were taking part in a prison road gang. These road gangs were formed to help the state maintain the state highway infrastructure. The prisoner’s primary responsibilities are to pick up trash and debris from the roadway. This is a prime example of a work group or working group used by most prison systems in the United States. Work groups or working groups can be defined as a collection of individuals or entities working together to achieve a specific goal or accomplish a specific set of tasks. Typically these groups are only established for a short period of time and are dissolved once the desired outcome has been achieved. More often than not group members usually feel as though they are expendable to the group and some even dread that they are even in the group. "A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable." (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993) So how do you determine that a team is a high-performing team?  This can be determined by three base line criteria that include: consistently high quality output, the promotion of personal growth and well being of all team members, and most importantly the ability to learn and grow as a unit. Initially, a team can successfully create high-performing output without meeting all three criteria, however this will erode over time because team members will feel detached from the group or that they are not growing then the quality of the output will decline. High performing teams are similar to work groups because they both utilize a collection of individuals or entities to accomplish tasks. What distinguish a high-performing team from a work group are its characteristics. High-performing teams contain five core characteristics. These characteristics are what separate a group from a team. The five characteristics of a high-performing team include: Purpose, Performance Measures, People with Tasks and Relationship Skills, Process, and Preparation and Practice. A high-performing team is much more than a work group, and typically has a life cycle that can vary from team to team. The standard team lifecycle consists of five states and is comparable to a human life cycle. The five states of a high-performing team lifecycle include: Formulating, Storming, Normalizing, Performing, and Adjourning. The Formulating State of a team is first realized when the team members are first defined and roles are assigned to all members. This initial stage is very important because it can set the tone for the team and can ultimately determine its success or failure. In addition, this stage requires the team to have a strong leader because team members are normally unclear about specific roles, specific obstacles and goals that my lay ahead of them.  Finally, this stage is where most team members initially meet one another prior to working as a team unless the team members already know each other. The Storming State normally arrives directly after the formulation of a new team because there are still a lot of unknowns amongst the newly formed assembly. As a general rule most of the parties involved in the team are still getting used to the workload, pace of work, deadlines and the validity of various tasks that need to be performed by the group.  In this state everything is questioned because there are so many unknowns. Items commonly questioned include the credentials of others on the team, the actual validity of a project, and the leadership abilities of the team leader.  This can be exemplified by looking at the interactions between animals when they first meet.  If we look at a scenario where two people are walking directly toward each other with their dogs. The dogs will automatically enter the Storming State because they do not know the other dog. Typically in this situation, they attempt to define which is more dominating via play or fighting depending on how the dogs interact with each other. Once dominance has been defined and accepted by both dogs then they will either want to play or leave depending on how the dogs interacted and other environmental variables. Once the Storming State has been realized then the Normalizing State takes over. This state is entered by a team once all the questions of the Storming State have been answered and the team has been tested by a few tasks or projects.  Typically, participants in the team are filled with energy, and comradery, and a strong alliance with team goals and objectives.  A high school football team is a perfect example of the Normalizing State when they start their season.  The player positions have been assigned, the depth chart has been filled and everyone is focused on winning each game. All of the players encourage and expect each other to perform at the best of their abilities and are united by competition from other teams. The Performing State is achieved by a team when its history, working habits, and culture solidify the team as one working unit. In this state team members can anticipate specific behaviors, attitudes, reactions, and challenges are seen as opportunities and not problems. Additionally, each team member knows their role in the team’s success, and the roles of others. This is the most productive state of a group and is where all the time invested working together really pays off. If you look at an Olympic figure skating team skate you can easily see how the time spent working together benefits their performance. They skate as one unit even though it is comprised of two skaters. Each skater has their routine completely memorized as well as their partners. This allows them to anticipate each other’s moves on the ice makes their skating look effortless. The final state of a team is the Adjourning State. This state is where accomplishments by the team and each individual team member are recognized. Additionally, this state also allows for reflection of the interactions between team members, work accomplished and challenges that were faced. Finally, the team celebrates the challenges they have faced and overcome as a unit. Currently in the workplace teams are divided into two different types: Co-located and Distributed Teams. Co-located teams defined as the traditional group of people working together in an office, according to Andy Singleton of Assembla. This traditional type of a team has dominated business in the past due to inadequate technology, which forced workers to primarily interact with one another via face to face meetings.  Team meetings are primarily lead by the person with the highest status in the company. Having personally, participated in meetings of this type, usually a select few of the team members dominate the flow of communication which reduces the input of others in group discussions. Since discussions are dominated by a select few individuals the discussions and group discussion are skewed in favor of the individuals who communicate the most in meetings. In addition, Team members might not give their full opinions on a topic of discussion in part not to offend or create controversy amongst the team and can alter decision made in meetings towards those of the opinions of the dominating team members. Distributed teams are by definition spread across an area or subdivided into separate sections. That is exactly what distributed teams when compared to a more traditional team. It is common place for distributed teams to have team members across town, in the next state, across the country and even with the advances in technology over the last 20 year across the world. These teams allow for more diversity compared to the other type of teams because they allow for more flexibility regarding location. A team could consist of a 30 year old male Italian project manager from New York, a 50 year old female Hispanic from California and a collection of programmers from India because technology allows them to communicate as if they were standing next to one another.  In addition, distributed team members consult with more team members prior to making decisions compared to traditional teams, and take longer to come to decisions due to the changes in time zones and cultural events. However, team members feel more empowered to speak out when they do not agree with the team and to notify others of potential issues regarding the work that the team is doing. Virtual teams which are a subset of the distributed team type is changing organizational strategies due to the fact that a team can now in essence be working 24 hrs a day because of utilizing employees in various time zones and locations.  A primary example of this is with customer services departments, a company can have multiple call centers spread across multiple time zones allowing them to appear to be open 24 hours a day while all a employees work from 9AM to 5 PM every day. Virtual teams also allow human resources departments to go after the best talent for the company regardless of where the potential employee works because they will be a part of a virtual team all that is need is the proper technology to be setup to allow everyone to communicate. In addition to allowing employees to work from home, the company can save space and resources by not having to provide a desk for every team member. In fact, those team members that randomly come into the office can actually share one desk amongst multiple people. This is definitely a cost cutting plus given the current state of the economy. One thing that can turn a team into a high-performing team is leadership. High-performing team leaders need to focus on investing in ongoing personal development, provide team members with direction, structure, and resources needed to accomplish their work, make the right interventions at the right time, and help the team manage boundaries between the team and various external parties involved in the teams work. A team leader needs to invest in ongoing personal development in order to effectively manage their team. People have said that attitude is everything; this is very true about leaders and leadership. A team takes on the attitudes and behaviors of its leaders. This can potentially harm the team and the team’s output. Leaders must concentrate on self-awareness, and understanding their team’s group dynamics to fully understand how to lead them. In addition, always learning new leadership techniques from other effective leaders is also very beneficial. Providing team members with direction, structure, and resources that they need to accomplish their work collectively sounds easy, but it is not.  Leaders need to be able to effectively communicate with their team on how their work helps the company reach for its organizational vision. Conversely, the leader needs to allow his team to work autonomously within specific guidelines to turn the company’s vision into a reality.  This being said the team must be appropriately staffed according to the size of the team’s tasks and their complexity. These tasks should be clear, and be meaningful to the company’s objectives and allow for feedback to be exchanged with the leader and the team member and the leader and upper management. Now if the team is properly staffed, and has a clear and full understanding of what is to be done; the company also must supply the workers with the proper tools to achieve the tasks that they are asked to do. No one should be asked to dig a hole without being given a shovel.  Finally, leaders must reward their team members for accomplishments that they achieve. Awards could range from just a simple congratulatory email, a party to close the completion of a large project, or other monetary rewards. Managing boundaries is very important for team leaders because it can alter attitudes of team members and can add undue stress to the team which will force them to loose focus on the tasks at hand for the group. Team leaders should promote communication between team members so that burdens are shared amongst the team and solutions can be derived from hearing the opinions of multiple sources. This also reinforces team camaraderie and working as a unit. Team leaders must manage the type and timing of interventions as to not create an even bigger mess within the team. Poorly timed interventions can really deflate team members and make them question themselves. This could really increase further and undue interventions by the team leader. Typically, the best time for interventions is when the team is just starting to form so that all unproductive behaviors are removed from the team and that it can retain focus on its agenda. If an intervention is effectively executed the team will feel energized about the work that they are doing, promote communication and interaction amongst the group and improve moral overall. High-performing teams are very import to organizations because they consistently produce high quality output and develop a collective purpose for their work. This drive to succeed allows team members to utilize specific talents allowing for growth in these areas.  In addition, these team members usually take on a sense of ownership with their projects and feel that the other team members are irreplaceable. References: http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/3127/Three-ways-to-organize-your-team-co-located-outsourced-or-global.aspx Katzenbach, J.R. & Smith, D.K. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-performance Organization. Boston: Harvard Business School.

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• The Benefits of Smart Grid Business Software

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Smart Grid Background What Are Smart Grids?Smart Grids use computer hardware and software, sensors, controls, and telecommunications equipment and services to: Link customers to information that helps them manage consumption and use electricity wisely. Enable customers to respond to utility notices in ways that help minimize the duration of overloads, bottlenecks, and outages. Provide utilities with information that helps them improve performance and control costs. What Is Driving Smart Grid Development? Environmental ImpactSmart Grid development is picking up speed because of the widespread interest in reducing the negative impact that energy use has on the environment. Smart Grids use technology to drive efficiencies in transmission, distribution, and consumption. As a result, utilities can serve customers’ power needs with fewer generating plants, fewer transmission and distribution assets,and lower overall generation. With the possible exception of wind farm sprawl, landscape preservation is one obvious benefit. And because most generation today results in greenhouse gas emissions, Smart Grids reduce air pollution and the potential for global climate change.Smart Grids also more easily accommodate the technical difficulties of integrating intermittent renewable resources like wind and solar into the grid, providing further greenhouse gas reductions. CostsThe ability to defer the cost of plant and grid expansion is a major benefit to both utilities and customers. Utilities do not need to use as many internal resources for traditional infrastructure project planning and management. Large T&D infrastructure expansion costs are not passed on to customers.Smart Grids will not eliminate capital expansion, of course. Transmission corridors to connect renewable generation with customers will require major near-term expenditures. Additionally, in the future, electricity to satisfy the needs of population growth and additional applications will exceed the capacity reductions available through the Smart Grid. At that point, expansion will resume—but with greater overall T&D efficiency based on demand response, load control, and many other Smart Grid technologies and business processes. Energy efficiency is a second area of Smart Grid cost saving of particular relevance to customers. The timely and detailed information Smart Grids provide encourages customers to limit waste, adopt energy-efficient building codes and standards, and invest in energy efficient appliances. Efficiency may or may not lower customer bills because customer efficiency savings may be offset by higher costs in generation fuels or carbon taxes. It is clear, however, that bills will be lower with efficiency than without it. Utility Operations Smart Grids can serve as the central focus of utility initiatives to improve business processes. Many utilities have long “wish lists” of projects and applications they would like to fund in order to improve customer service or ease staff’s burden of repetitious work, but they have difficulty cost-justifying the changes, especially in the short term. Adding Smart Grid benefits to the cost/benefit analysis frequently tips the scales in favor of the change and can also significantly reduce payback periods.Mobile workforce applications and asset management applications work together to deploy assets and then to maintain, repair, and replace them. Many additional benefits result—for instance, increased productivity and fuel savings from better routing. Similarly, customer portals that provide customers with near-real-time information can also encourage online payments, thus lowering billing costs. Utilities can and should include these cost and service improvements in the list of Smart Grid benefits. What Is Smart Grid Business Software? Smart Grid business software gathers data from a Smart Grid and uses it improve a utility’s business processes. Smart Grid business software also helps utilities provide relevant information to customers who can then use it to reduce their own consumption and improve their environmental profiles. Smart Grid Business Software Minimizes the Impact of Peak Demand Utilities must size their assets to accommodate their highest peak demand. The higher the peak rises above base demand: The more assets a utility must build that are used only for brief periods—an inefficient use of capital. The higher the utility’s risk profile rises given the uncertainties surrounding the time needed for permitting, building, and recouping costs. The higher the costs for utilities to purchase supply, because generators can charge more for contracts and spot supply during high-demand periods. Smart Grids enable a variety of programs that reduce peak demand, including: Time-of-use pricing and critical peak pricing—programs that charge customers more when they consume electricity during peak periods. Pilot projects indicate that these programs are successful in flattening peaks, thus ensuring better use of existing T&D and generation assets. Direct load control, which lets utilities reduce or eliminate electricity flow to customer equipment (such as air conditioners). Contracts govern the terms and conditions of these turn-offs. Indirect load control, which signals customers to reduce the use of on-premises equipment for contractually agreed-on time periods. Smart Grid business software enables utilities to impose penalties on customers who do not comply with their contracts. Smart Grids also help utilities manage peaks with existing assets by enabling: Real-time asset monitoring and control. In this application, advanced sensors safely enable dynamic capacity load limits, ensuring that all grid assets can be used to their maximum capacity during peak demand periods. Real-time asset monitoring and control applications also detect the location of excessive losses and pinpoint need for mitigation and asset replacements. As a result, utilities reduce outage risk and guard against excess capacity or “over-build”. Better peak demand analysis. As a result: Distribution planners can better size equipment (e.g. transformers) to avoid over-building. Operations engineers can identify and resolve bottlenecks and other inefficiencies that may cause or exacerbate peaks. As above, the result is a reduction in the tendency to over-build. Supply managers can more closely match procurement with delivery. As a result, they can fine-tune supply portfolios, reducing the tendency to over-contract for peak supply and reducing the need to resort to spot market purchases during high peaks. Smart Grids can help lower the cost of remaining peaks by: Standardizing interconnections for new distributed resources (such as electricity storage devices). Placing the interconnections where needed to support anticipated grid congestion. Smart Grid Business Software Lowers the Cost of Field Services By processing Smart Grid data through their business software, utilities can reduce such field costs as: Vegetation management. Smart Grids can pinpoint momentary interruptions and tree-caused outages. Spatial mash-up tools leverage GIS models of tree growth for targeted vegetation management. This reduces the cost of unnecessary tree trimming. Service vehicle fuel. Many utility service calls are “false alarms.” Checking meter status before dispatching crews prevents many unnecessary “truck rolls.” Similarly, crews use far less fuel when Smart Grid sensors can pinpoint a problem and mobile workforce applications can then route them directly to it. Smart Grid Business Software Ensures Regulatory Compliance Smart Grids can ensure compliance with private contracts and with regional, national, or international requirements by: Monitoring fulfillment of contract terms. Utilities can use one-hour interval meters to ensure that interruptible (“non-core”) customers actually reduce or eliminate deliveries as required. They can use the information to levy fines against contract violators. Monitoring regulations imposed on customers, such as maximum use during specific time periods. Using accurate time-stamped event history derived from intelligent devices distributed throughout the smart grid to monitor and report reliability statistics and risk compliance. Automating business processes and activities that ensure compliance with security and reliability measures (e.g. NERC-CIP 2-9). Grid Business Software Strengthens Utilities’ Connection to Customers While Reducing Customer Service Costs During outages, Smart Grid business software can: Identify outages more quickly. Software uses sensors to pinpoint outages and nested outage locations. They also permit utilities to ensure outage resolution at every meter location. Size outages more accurately, permitting utilities to dispatch crews that have the skills needed, in appropriate numbers. Provide updates on outage location and expected duration. This information helps call centers inform customers about the timing of service restoration. Smart Grids also facilitates display of outage maps for customer and public-service use. Smart Grids can significantly reduce the cost to: Connect and disconnect customers. Meters capable of remote disconnect can virtually eliminate the costs of field crews and vehicles previously required to change service from the old to the new residents of a metered property or disconnect customers for nonpayment. Resolve reports of voltage fluctuation. Smart Grids gather and report voltage and power quality data from meters and grid sensors, enabling utilities to pinpoint reported problems or resolve them before customers complain. Detect and resolve non-technical losses (e.g. theft). Smart Grids can identify illegal attempts to reconnect meters or to use electricity in supposedly vacant premises. They can also detect theft by comparing flows through delivery assets with billed consumption. Smart Grids also facilitate outreach to customers. By monitoring and analyzing consumption over time, utilities can: Identify customers with unusually high usage and contact them before they receive a bill. They can also suggest conservation techniques that might help to limit consumption. This can head off “high bill” complaints to the contact center. Note that such “high usage” or “additional charges apply because you are out of range” notices—frequently via text messaging—are already common among mobile phone providers. Help customers identify appropriate bill payment alternatives (budget billing, prepayment, etc.). Help customers find and reduce causes of over-consumption. There’s no waiting for bills in the mail before they even understand there is a problem. Utilities benefit not just through improved customer relations but also through limiting the size of bills from customers who might struggle to pay them. Where permitted, Smart Grids can open the doors to such new utility service offerings as: Monitoring properties. Landlords reduce costs of vacant properties when utilities notify them of unexpected energy or water consumption. Utilities can perform similar services for owners of vacation properties or the adult children of aging parents. Monitoring equipment. Power-use patterns can reveal a need for equipment maintenance. Smart Grids permit utilities to alert owners or managers to a need for maintenance or replacement. Facilitating home and small-business networks. Smart Grids can provide a gateway to equipment networks that automate control or let owners access equipment remotely. They also facilitate net metering, offering some utilities a path toward involvement in small-scale solar or wind generation. Prepayment plans that do not need special meters. Smart Grid Business Software Helps Customers Control Energy Costs There is no end to the ways Smart Grids help both small and large customers control energy costs. For instance: Multi-premises customers appreciate having all meters read on the same day so that they can more easily compare consumption at various sites. Customers in competitive regions can match their consumption profile (detailed via Smart Grid data) with specific offerings from competitive suppliers. Customers seeing inexplicable consumption patterns and power quality problems may investigate further. The result can be discovery of electrical problems that can be resolved through rewiring or maintenance—before more serious fires or accidents happen. Smart Grid Business Software Facilitates Use of Renewables Generation from wind and solar resources is a popular alternative to fossil fuel generation, which emits greenhouse gases. Wind and solar generation may also increase energy security in regions that currently import fossil fuel for use in generation. Utilities face many technical issues as they attempt to integrate intermittent resource generation into traditional grids, which traditionally handle only fully dispatchable generation. Smart Grid business software helps solves many of these issues by: Detecting sudden drops in production from renewables-generated electricity (wind and solar) and automatically triggering electricity storage and smart appliance response to compensate as needed. Supporting industry-standard distributed generation interconnection processes to reduce interconnection costs and avoid adding renewable supplies to locations already subject to grid congestion. Facilitating modeling and monitoring of locally generated supply from renewables and thus helping to maximize their use. Increasing the efficiency of “net metering” (through which utilities can use electricity generated by customers) by: Providing data for analysis. Integrating the production and consumption aspects of customer accounts. During non-peak periods, such techniques enable utilities to increase the percent of renewable generation in their supply mix. During peak periods, Smart Grid business software controls circuit reconfiguration to maximize available capacity. Conclusion Utility missions are changing. Yesterday, they focused on delivery of reasonably priced energy and water. Tomorrow, their missions will expand to encompass sustainable use and environmental improvement.Smart Grids are key to helping utilities achieve this expanded mission. But they come at a relatively high price. Utilities will need to invest heavily in new hardware, software, business process development, and staff training. Customer investments in home area networks and smart appliances will be large. Learning to change the energy and water consumption habits of a lifetime could ultimately prove even more formidable tasks.Smart Grid business software can ease the cost and difficulties inherent in a needed transition to a more flexible, reliable, responsive electricity grid. Justifying its implementation, however, requires a full understanding of the benefits it brings—benefits that can ultimately help customers, utilities, communities, and the world address global issues like energy security and climate change while minimizing costs and maximizing customer convenience. This white paper is available for download here. For further information about Oracle's Primavera Solutions for Utilities, please read our Utilities e-book.

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• SQLAuthority News – Job Interviewing the Right Way (and for the Right Reasons) – Guest Post by Feodor Georgiev

  - by pinaldave

  Feodor Georgiev is a SQL Server database specialist with extensive experience of thinking both within and outside the box. He has wide experience of different systems and solutions in the fields of architecture, scalability, performance, etc. Feodor has experience with SQL Server 2000 and later versions, and is certified in SQL Server 2008. Feodor has written excellent article on Job Interviewing the Right Way. Here is his article in his own language. A while back I was thinking to start a blog post series on interviewing and employing IT personnel. At that time I had just read the ‘Smart and gets things done’ book (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/05.html) and I was hyped up on some debatable topics regarding finding and employing the best people in the branch. I have no problem with hiring the best of the best; it’s just the definition of ‘the best of the best’ that makes things a bit more complicated. One of the fundamental books one can read on the topic of interviewing is the one mentioned above. If you have not read it, then you must do so; not because it contains the ultimate truth, and not because it gives the answers to most questions on the subject, but because the book contains an extensive set of questions about interviewing and employing people. Of course, a big part of these questions have different answers, depending on location, culture, available funds and so on. (What works in the US may not necessarily work in the Nordic countries or India, or it may work in a different way). The only thing that is valid regardless of any external factor is this: curiosity. In my belief there are two kinds of people – curious and not-so-curious; regardless of profession. Think about it – professional success is directly proportional to the individual’s curiosity + time of active experience in the field. (I say ‘active experience’ because vacations and any distractions do not count as experience :)  ) So, curiosity is the factor which will distinguish a good employee from the not-so-good one. But let’s shift our attention to something else for now: a few tips and tricks for successful interviews. Tip and trick #1: get your priorities straight. Your status usually dictates your priorities; for example, if the person looking for a job has just relocated to a new country, they might tend to ignore some of their priorities and overload others. In other words, setting priorities straight means to define the personal criteria by which the interview process is lead. For example, similar to the following questions can help define the criteria for someone looking for a job: How badly do I need a (any) job? Is it more important to work in a clean and quiet environment or is it important to get paid well (or both, if possible)? And so on… Furthermore, before going to the interview, the candidate should have a list of priorities, sorted by the most importance: e.g. I want a quiet environment, x amount of money, great helping boss, a desk next to a window and so on. Also it is a good idea to be prepared and know which factors can be compromised and to what extent. Tip and trick #2: the interview is a two-way street. A job candidate should not forget that the interview process is not a one-way street. What I mean by this is that while the employer is interviewing the potential candidate, the job seeker should not miss the chance to interview the employer. Usually, the employer and the candidate will meet for an interview and talk about a variety of topics. In a quality interview the candidate will be presented to key members of the team and will have the opportunity to ask them questions. By asking the right questions both parties will define their opinion about each other. For example, if the candidate talks to one of the potential bosses during the interview process and they notice that the potential manager has a hard time formulating a question, then it is up to the candidate to decide whether working with such person is a red flag for them. There are as many interview processes out there as there are companies and each one is different. Some bigger companies and corporates can afford pre-selection processes, 3 or even 4 stages of interviews, small companies usually settle with one interview. Some companies even give cognitive tests on the interview. Why not? In his book Joel suggests that a good candidate should be pampered and spoiled beyond belief with a week-long vacation in New York, fancy hotels, food and who knows what. For all I can imagine, an interview might even take place at the top of the Eifel tower (right, Mr. Joel, right?) I doubt, however, that this is the optimal way to capture the attention of a good employee. The ‘curiosity’ topic What I have learned so far in my professional experience is that opinions can be subjective. Plus, opinions on technology subjects can also be subjective. According to Joel, only hiring the best of the best is worth it. If you ask me, there is no such thing as best of the best, simply because human nature (well, aside from some physical limitations, like putting your pants on through your head :) ) has no boundaries. And why would it have boundaries? I have seen many curious and interesting people, naturally good at technology, though uninterested in it as one  can possibly be; I have also seen plenty of people interested in technology, who (in an ideal world) should have stayed far from it. At any rate, all of this sums up at the end to the ‘supply and demand’ factor. The interview process big-bang boils down to this: If there is a mutual benefit for both the employer and the potential employee to work together, then it all sorts out nicely. If there is no benefit, then it is much harder to get to a common place. Tip and trick #3: word-of-mouth is worth a thousand words Here I would just mention that the best thing a job candidate can get during the interview process is access to future team members or other employees of the new company. Nowadays the world has become quite small and everyone knows everyone. Look at LinkedIn, look at other professional networks and you will realize how small the world really is. Knowing people is a good way to become more approachable and to approach them. Tip and trick #4: Be confident. It is true that for some people confidence is as natural as breathing and others have to work hard to express it. Confidence is, however, a key factor in convincing the other side (potential employer or employee) that there is a great chance for success by working together. But it cannot get you very far if it’s not backed up by talent, curiosity and knowledge. Tip and trick #5: The right reasons What really bothers me in Sweden (and I am sure that there are similar situations in other countries) is that there is a tendency to fill quotas and to filter out candidates by criteria different from their skill and knowledge. In job ads I see quite often the phrases ‘positive thinker’, ‘team player’ and many similar hints about personality features. So my guess here is that discrimination has evolved to a new level. Let me clear up the definition of discrimination: ‘unfair treatment of a person or group on the basis of prejudice’. And prejudice is the ‘partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation’. In other words, there is not much difference whether a job candidate is filtered out by race, gender or by personality features – it is all a bad habit. And in reality, there is no proven correlation between the technology knowledge paired with skills and the personal features (gender, race, age, optimism). It is true that a significantly greater number of Darwin awards were given to men than to women, but I am sure that somewhere there is a paper or theory explaining the genetics behind this. J This topic actually brings to mind one of my favorite work related stories. A while back I was working for a big company with many teams involved in their processes. One of the teams was occupying 2 rooms – one had the team members and was full of light, colorful posters, chit-chats and giggles, whereas the other room was dark, lighted only by a single monitor with a quiet person in front of it. Later on I realized that the ‘dark room’ person was the guru and the ultimate problem-solving-brain who did not like the chats and giggles and hence was in a separate room. In reality, all severe problems which the chatty and cheerful team members could not solve and all emergencies were directed to ‘the dark room’. And thus all worked out well. The moral of the story: Personality has nothing to do with technology knowledge and skills. End of story. Summary: I’d like to stress the fact that there is no ultimately perfect candidate for a job, and there is no such thing as ‘best-of-the-best’. From my personal experience, the main criteria by which I measure people (co-workers and bosses) is the curiosity factor; I know from experience that the more curious and inventive a person is, the better chances there are for great achievements in their field. Related stories: (for extra credit) 1) Get your priorities straight. A while back as a consultant I was working for a few days at a time at different offices and for different clients, and so I was able to compare and analyze the work environments. There were two different places which I compared and recently I asked a friend of mine the following question: “Which one would you prefer as a work environment: a noisy office full of people, or a quiet office full of faulty smells because the office is rarely cleaned?” My friend was puzzled for a while, thought about it and said: “Hmm, you are talking about two different kinds of pollution… I will probably choose the second, since I can clean the workplace myself a bit…” 2) The interview is a two-way street. One time, during a job interview, I met a potential boss that had a hard time phrasing a question. At that particular time it was clear to me that I would not have liked to work under this person. According to my work religion, the properly asked question contains at least half of the answer. And if I work with someone who cannot ask a question… then I’d be doing double or triple work. At another interview, after the technical part with the team leader of the department, I was introduced to one of the team members and we were left alone for 5 minutes. I immediately jumped on the occasion and asked the blunt question: ‘What have you learned here for the past year and how do you like your job?’ The team member looked at me and said ‘Nothing really. I like playing with my cats at home, so I am out of here at 5pm and I don’t have time for much.’ I was disappointed at the time and I did not take the job offer. I wasn’t that shocked a few months later when the company went bankrupt. 3) The right reasons to take a job: personality check. A while back I was asked to serve as a job reference for a coworker. I agreed, and after some weeks I got a phone call from the company where my colleague was applying for a job. The conversation started with the manager’s question about my colleague’s personality and about their social skills. (You can probably guess what my internal reaction was… J ) So, after 30 minutes of pouring common sense into the interviewer’s head, we finally agreed on the fact that a shy or quiet personality has nothing to do with work skills and knowledge. Some years down the road my former colleague is taking the manager’s position as the manager is demoted to a different department. Reference: Feodor Georgiev, Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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